Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

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Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

DISCLAIMER: First of all, note that I’m not a professional linguist, much less a specialist on Indo-European. However, I think an informal “layman’s guide” to Proto-Indo-European can be interesting and useful to conlangers in general. If you find any errors, please let me know: I’ll be glad to make appropriate corrections. Also bear in mind that English isn’t my native language (neither is Proto-Indo-European [:)]).

Thank you for reading!


INTRODUCTION

The Proto-Indo-European language (abbreviated as PIE) is the common ancestor of all Indo-European languages. The latest common stage of PIE was probably spoken in the 4th millennium BC by the Yamna culture living on the northern shore of the Black Sea, in present-day Ukraine (hence the title of this guide “spoken Yamna style” [:)]).

Starting around 3000 BC, PIE speakers migrated across Eurasia all the way west to the Atlantic Ocean and all the way east to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Languages of the Indo-European family spread out even further during the European colonial expansion from the 16th century onwards. Today, over 3 billion people speak an IE language, making it the language family with the most speakers in the world by far.

Indo-European languages are very significant also for another reason, however. To reconstruct the proto-language of the Indo-European family (we’ll see what reconstructing a proto-language means later), new conceptual tools had to be developed. Thanks to these new methods, that were later applied successfully to other language families all over the world, historical linguistics was recognized as an actual science.

By now, the Indo-European family is divided into several sub-families, as follows:

- the extinct Anatolian sub-family (including Hittite, Luwian, Lydian and other languages)
- the extinct Tocharian sub-family (including Tocharian A and Tocharian B, once spoken in Western China)
- the Indo-Aryan sub-family (including Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, as well as Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi and many other modern languages)
- the Iranic sub-family (including Persian/Farsi, Pashto, Kurdish, Ossetian and more)
- the Graeco-Armenian sub-family (including all dialects of Greek, Phrygian and Armenian, although some linguists prefer to put Armenian in an independent sub-family)
- the Italic languages (such as Umbrian, Latin and the modern Romance languages derived from Latin, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian etc)
- the Celtic languages (including Welsh, Breton and Old Irish among others)
- the Germanic languages (including Old Norse, Swedish, Danish, German and of course English, among many others)
- the Balto-Slavic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian are Baltic languages; examples of Slavic languages are Czech, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic)
- the Albanian language (with its dialects)
- other unclassified ancient IE languages, such as Illyrian, Venetic, Thracian and more

There is zero direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European. The language was never written (or audio recorded [;)]) by its speakers. Therefore, every PIE word was reconstructed by carefully comparing later Indo-European languages, finding systematic similarities and differences and looking for probable ancient forms that could have developed into the later forms.

In formal linguistics, reconstructed PIE words are marked with an asterisk to show they are not attested in ancient texts (like say *swésōr “sister”). As this guide is firmly outside formal linguistics, I’ll not use asterisks. After all it should be clear and understood that every PIE word is unattested.

Finally, I’d like to dispel a misconception about PIE and ancient languages in general: some people think these languages are “primitive” and therefore should have a simpler structure in morphology and syntax. Actually, we know next to nothing about PIE syntax, but its morphology (as we will see) is far, far more complex than that of modern Western European languages.
Last edited by atman on 01 Aug 2013 17:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by nzk13 »

Hittite, eh? I wonder if that could be a way to get some connection between IE and the Semitic langs? Anyway, interesting introduction. Personally, I'd prefer you use the asterisks, to give it a more linguistic feel, but it's your thread :). Carry on, please.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by kanejam »

Excellent!! I am greatly looking forward to more!! It will be interesting to see how you treat phonology. And I don't mind a lack of asterisks; I'm sure we can all just recognise that any non-English word not labelled otherwise is PIE. Are you not going to make the distinction between the later stages of PIE and Proto-Indo-Hittite that some people treat as a different beast? But nonetheless please carry on!
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

nzk13 wrote:Hittite, eh? I wonder if that could be a way to get some connection between IE and the Semitic langs? Anyway, interesting introduction. Personally, I'd prefer you use the asterisks, to give it a more linguistic feel, but it's your thread :). Carry on, please.
Connections between IE and Semitic exist (Semitic loans in Greek and Hittite etc), but they are areal connections, not genetic ones.
kanejam wrote:Excellent!! I am greatly looking forward to more!! It will be interesting to see how you treat phonology. And I don't mind a lack of asterisks; I'm sure we can all just recognise that any non-English word not labelled otherwise is PIE. Are you not going to make the distinction between the later stages of PIE and Proto-Indo-Hittite that some people treat as a different beast? But nonetheless please carry on!
Thank you!! I'll probably fail to treat phonology very well (I'm better at morphosyntax), but I'll try.

As for the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, I don't know. The evidence for/against early separation of the Anatolian langs from PIE is controversial, and making sense of it is well above my linguistics and archeology pay grade. This is an introductory guide to late unitary PIE (spoken by the Yamna culture, spoken Yamna style), when each sub-branch separated isn't so important.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

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PHONOLOGY

In spite of two centuries of research, there are still many unanswered questions about the phonology of Proto-Indo-European. Especially, it’s not clear what some phonemes “really” sounded like. But we know quite a lot about the sounds of PIE, because the historical linguists who worked (and keep working!) on its reconstruction did a terrific job.

To compare, some of the finer points of Latin and Ancient Greek pronunciation aren’t clear still today, and these languages have an enormous literature to help analysis. On the other hand, the total corpus of original literature in PIE amounts to zero words.

Of course, the actual, historical Late Proto-Indo-European (the language of the Yamna culture) showed dialectal variation, multiple registries and more socio-linguistic phenomena we can’t even guess at. Reconstructed Late PIE is a dialect-leveled, “averaged” approximation of the historical language, and is not designed to match the exact dialect of any particular tribe (this would be impossible, besides).

ORTHOGRAPHY
The standard orthography is needlessly complicated (and it could be improved quite easily), but we have to just accept it as it is: every work in IE studies uses it, so…

CONSONANTS
Nasals: <m n>
Voiceless plosives: <p t ḱ k kʷ>
Voiced plosives: <b d ǵ g gʷ>
Voiced aspirated plosives: <bʰ dʰ ǵʰ gʰ gʷʰ>
Fricatives: <s h₁ h₂ h₃>
Liquids: <l r>
Approximants: <y w>

VOWELS
Simple short vowels: <e o> and possibly <a>
Simple long vowels: <ē ō> and possibly <ā>
Diphthongs: <ey ēy ew ēw oy ōy ow ōw>
Vocalic allophones of consonants: <a> (underlying <e> before or after h₂),
<i u m n l r> (underlying resonant consonants, that is approximants, liquids and nasals, when they are not next to a vowel),
<h₁ h₂ h₃> (underlying “laryngeal” fricatives, when they are not next to a vowel)

THE (LIKELY) SOUNDS OF PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN
Phonemes written <m n p t k b d g l r w e o a> were likely always pronounced as their commonly known IPA values (only /n/ became /ŋ/ before velars)
Approximant <y> is pronounced /j/. In PIE, <y> never represents a front rounded vowel (which would be its IPA value).

OTHER PLOSIVES
<bʰ dʰ gʰ> are aspirated plosives; pronunciation as in IPA
<kʷ gʷ> are labialized plosives, and contrast with plain plosive+w clusters like <kw gw>
<gʷʰ> is a labialized and aspirated plosive; pronounciation as in IPA
<ḱ ǵ> are palatalized plosives, they were probably realized as /kʲ gʲ/
<ǵʰ> is a palatalized and aspirated plosive; likely pronunciation /gʲʰ/

FRICATIVES
The actual pronounciation of the “laryngeal” fricatives is still a matter of debate. The following is only one of the best-supported proposals.
<h₁> was probably /h/
<h₂> was probably velar /x/ and/or uvular /X/
<h₃> was probably velar /xʷ/ and/or uvular /Xʷ/
All fricatives, including /s/, become voiced before a voiced consonant. This happens often especially to <s> and <h₃>.

VOCALIC ALLOPHONES
When a liquid, nasal or laryngeal acts as the syllable nucleus, this creates a complex consonant cluster. To make pronunciation easier, a central vowel (we’ll always use /ǝ/, but it’s not a given it was always /ǝ/ in historical PIE) was inserted before the “vocalized” consonant.

Example: ph₂tḗr “father” is realized as something like /pǝxté:r/.


Next part: accent, syllable structure...
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

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ACCENT

Proto-Indo-European had a free pitch accent. Stressed syllables were therefore distinguished by a higher pitch, and the accent was mobile, that is to say it could (and frequently did) change position within the inflectional paradigm of a word. The accent could be on any syllable of a word, without limitations.

Not every PIE word had an accent. Some pronouns and particles didn't have one.

For example, there is the -kʷe clitic (meaning “and”): mḗh₁n̥s h₂stéreskʷe
“the moon and the stars”, literally “moon stars-and”.


ROOT STRUCTURE

PIE roots are the basic building blocks of the language. They are morphemes that carry a lexical meaning; the addition of appropriate prefixes/suffixes and endings is necessary to form a fully inflected word (a noun, an adjective or a verb). An ending-less root+suffix combination is called a stem. There are of course words without a suffix, where endings are attached directly to the root.

Proto-Indo-European roots are generally monosyllabic. A root can start with up to three consonants (but if they are three, the first one must be s), and also end with one or two consonants. In the middle is a vowel (typically e) which can however change or disappear according to well-defined patterns (see next section on ablaut).

In roots, there is an increase in sonority up to the vowel, and a decrease in sonority after the vowel.

A root cannot both start and end with voiced plosives: *deg- and *bag- violate phonotactics. A root cannot contain both a voiceless plosive and an aspirated one: *bʰek- and *tebʰ- violate phonotactics. However, a root with a sPeBʰ structure, where P is any voiceless plosive and Bʰ is any aspirate (like say stebʰ-) is legal.

ABLAUT

Proto-Indo-European ablaut is a system of regular vowel variations. Ablaut applies to both inflectional and derivational morphology: vowel changes happen throughout an inflectional paradigm or across related words based on the same root.

The basic vowel is a short e, and syllables with this basic short e are said to be in the e-grade or full grade. If it changes to ē, the syllable is said to be in the lengthened grade, o is the o-grade, ō is the lengthened o-grade and if the basic e disappears (the symbol Ø is used to show its absence), then the syllable is said to be in the zero grade.

Not every syllable can form a zero grade, however: for this to be possible the e had to be followed by a sonorant: if so, the ablaut patterns were the following:

e-grade <> o-grade <> zero grade
ey <> oy <> i
ew <> ow <> u
el <> ol <> əl
em <> om <> əm
en <> on <> ən
er <> or <> ər
eh₁ <> oh₁ <> əh₁
eh₂ <> oh₂ <> əh₂
eh₃ <> oh₃ <> əh₃
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

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NOMINAL MORPHOLOGY

BASICS

Proto-Indo-European was a fusional, synthetic language, with basic unmarked SOV word order and nominative-accusative alignment. Recent research hints to the possibility that older stages of PIE might have had active-stative alignment and a largely agglutinative morphology, but this is beyond the scope of this introductory guide, which deals with late PIE.

Proto-Indo-European nouns belonged to one of three genders (masculine, feminine or neuter), and were declined for three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and eight cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, ablative and locative). Some have proposed a ninth case for PIE (a directive-final-allative), but there isn't enough evidence for it and no major reconstructions include it. Nominative, vocative and accusative are called the “strong” or “direct” cases; the others are the “weak” or “oblique” ones.

The main distinction that must be made is that between thematic and athematic nominals. Thematic nominals are called this way because their stem ends in a thematic vowel (typically -o-). In this class of nouns the accent always stays on the same syllable throughout the declension. Stems of athematic nominals end in consonants (however, some of these eventually turned into vowels because of sound change).

In the declension tables below, we'll see the thematic -o- nouns (masculine and neuter), and the athematic -eh₂ stem feminines. Be aware that there is often no consensus about the dual forms, because it's hard to reconstruct them. When I couldn't find reliable data, I substituted “…........” for the missing forms.


THEMATIC -o- NOUNS (MASCULINE)

example word: nisdós (nest)

Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Nom: nisdós <> nisdóh₁ <> nisdóes
Voc: nisdé <> nisdóh₁ <> nisdóes
Acc: nisdóm <> nisdóh₁ <> nisdóns
Gen: nisdósyo <> …......... <> nisdṓm
Dat: nisdóey <> …......... <> nisdóymos
Instr: nisdóh₁ <> ….......... <> nisdṓys
Abl: nisdéad <> …......... <> nisdóymos
Loc: nisdéy <> …......... <> nisdóysu


THEMATIC -o- NOUNS (NEUTER)

example word: yugóm (yoke)

Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Nom: yugóm <> yugóyh₁ <> yugéh₂
Voc: yugóm <> yugóyh₁ <> yugéh₂
Acc: yugóm <> yugóyh₁ <> yugéh₂
Gen: yugósyo <> …......... <> yugṓm
Dat: yugóey <> …......... <> yugóymos
Instr: yugóh₁ <> ….......... <> yugṓys
Abl: yugéad <> …......... <> yugóymos
Loc: yugéy <> …......... <> yugóysu


ATHEMATIC -eh₂ NOUNS (FEMININE)

example word: tewtéh₂ (tribe)

Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Nom: tewtéh₂ <> tewtéh₂ih₁ <> tewtéh₂es
Voc: tewtéh₂ <> tewtéh₂ih₁ <> tewtéh₂es
Acc: tewtéh₂m <> tewtéh₂ih₁ <> tewtéh₂ns
Gen: tewtéh₂s <> …......... <> tewtéh₂ōm
Dat: tewtéh₂ey <> …......... <> tewtéh₂mos
Instr: tewtéh₂eh₁ <> ….......... <> tewtéh₂bʰi
Abl: tewtéh₂s <> …......... <> tewtéh₂mos
Loc: tewtéh₂i <> …......... <> tewtéh₂su
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

There is still a lot to say about athematic nominals; I'll try to explain the whole zoo of sub-classes towards the end of the guide, and most of all when I have more time and patience [B)]. At that time, you'll encounter such nice, everyday words as acrostatic, proterokinetic, amphikinetic, Narten-type, heteroclitic stems and other generally pleasant and easy things [}:D]. Also, the Caland system of derivational morphology to build adjectives from roots will have to wait as well.

For now, let's see the declension of thematic adjectives and the conjugation of the Proto-Indo-European copula.

THEMATIC ADJECTIVES

Wait a minute, are there athematic adjectives too? Of course, but those decline (surprise, surprise) according to the athematic noun patterns that won't be featured until later.

Instead, thematic adjectives decline precisely according to the patterns shown above for -os, -eh₂, -om nouns in masculine, feminine and neuter gender respectively:

For instance, the thematic adjective dl̥h₁gʰós "long" is thus declined:

Nominative case:

--------Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Masc.: dl̥h₁gʰós <> dl̥h₁gʰóh₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰóes
Fem.: dl̥h₁gʰéh₂ <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂ih₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂es
Neut.: dl̥h₁gʰóm <> dl̥h₁gʰóyh₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂

Accusative case:

--------Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Masc.: dl̥h₁gʰóm <> dl̥h₁gʰóh₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰóns
Fem.: dl̥h₁gʰéh₂m <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂ih₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂ns
Neut.: dl̥h₁gʰóm <> dl̥h₁gʰóyh₁ <> dl̥h₁gʰéh₂

...and so on for the other cases (left as an exercise for the reader)


INDO-EUROPEAN COPULA

The basic PIE copula (the verb "to be") is built on the root h₁es-. Other PIE verbs (meaning to grow, to stand, to become and similar things) could most likely be used as copulas already in PIE and are in fact extensively reflected in the daughter languages, but the basic copula remains h₁es-.

For now, we'll see the conjugation of this verb in the present indicative h₁ésmi "I am" and in the imperfect indicative h₁ésm̥ "I was".

--------- Present <> Imperfect
1st SING h₁ésmi <> h₁ésm̥
2nd SING h₁ési <> h₁és
3rd SING h₁ésti <> h₁ést
1st DUAL h₁suós <> h₁sué
2nd DUAL h₁stés <> h₁stóm
3rd DUAL h₁stés <> h₁stām
1st PLUR h₁sm̥ós <> h₁sm̥é
2nd PLUR h₁sté <> h₁sté
3rd PLUR h₁sénti <> h₁sénd

Well, by now we should have the foundations in place to start putting together simple sentences in (reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European. See you next time!
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Ambrisio »

It's way too hard to remember those h_1's and h_2's, especially in complex words like tewtéh₂ih₁. I'd prefer <h x xw>.
hsté
How would you pronounce it?
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Click »

Ambrisio wrote:
hsté
How would you pronounce it?
/hsté/
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Ambrisio »

So is that h syllabic?
1st PLUR h₁sm̥ós <> h₁sm̥é
2nd PLUR h₁sté <> h₁sté
For a little perspective, how old is Proto-Uralic (and its descendant Proto-Finnic)? Those past tense endings are exactly the same in Estonian! (me olime = we were, te olite = you were)
I guess Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finnic are roughly as old as PIE and Proto-Germanic respectively.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Click »

Ambrisio wrote:So is that h syllabic?
No. a hypothetical h̥₁sté would have a syllabic h₁, but h₁sté does not.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by gach »

Ambrisio wrote:I guess Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finnic are roughly as old as PIE and Proto-Germanic respectively.
That's more or less along the lines most people think of it, give or take 1000 years in each case.

Finnic is also a pretty conservative branch so it's full of forms that are easily trackable to their earliest reconstructible manifestations.
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Ambrisio »

a hypothetical h̥₁sté would have a syllabic h₁, but h₁sté does not.
What would happen in rapid speech then? [hst] is rather weird for an initial consonant cluster IMO.
Here's a wild guess: in Latin, the form is 'estis', while in Greek, it is 'este'. There must have been some sort of epenthetic vowel adjacent to the h (either Vhste or hVste).
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

Ambrisio wrote:It's way too hard to remember those h_1's and h_2's, especially in complex words like tewtéh₂ih₁. I'd prefer <h x xw>.
hsté
How would you pronounce it?

...

What would happen in rapid speech then? [hst] is rather weird for an initial consonant cluster IMO.
Here's a wild guess: in Latin, the form is 'estis', while in Greek, it is 'este'. There must have been some sort of epenthetic vowel adjacent to the h (either Vhste or hVste).
Well, I think "h₁sté" was phonemically /hsté/, but was realized phonetically as /hə̆sté/, with a very short schwa.

But in general PIE is full of features that may appear "way too hard" "very complex" or "rather weird" to speakers of modern IE languages like us. I'm sure the Yamna people found their language absolutely normal. And we have to remember that (by definition) Proto-Indo-European isn't even an Indo-European language...

As for the orthography, I feel I have to use the standard one (even if it's unwieldy, even if it takes longer to type PIE than to translate into it) because that's what is largely used in "real" Indo-European studies, and I don't want to make things even more difficult for readers, who would have to learn two orthographies: the "new" one made by me and then the standard one (which one has to learn anyway if one wants to read anything else about IE).
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Proto-Indo-European only really had proper first person pronouns for the first and second person. For the third person, a demonstrative “this” was used instead. As usual, they are declined for number and case (the third person ones decline for gender too).

Pronouns have their exclusive declensional patterns, and in the accusative, genitive and dative cases there is a distinction between a stressed form and an unstressed, enclitic form.

Also, PIE was a pro-drop language: the verbs (as we'll see) are marked for person and number, so the nominative forms of personal pronouns could often be omitted.


1st person pronouns

Case: Singular <> Dual <> Plural
Nom/Voc: éǵh₂ <> weh₁ <> wéy
Acc stressed: h₁mé <> n̥h₃mé <> nsmé
Acc enclitic: h₁me <> noh₃ <> nōs
Gen stressed: h₁méne <> ..... <> n̥sóm
Gen enclitic: h₁moy <> .....<> nōs
Dat stressed: h₁méǵʰyo <> ..... <> n̥sméy
Dat enclitic: h₁moy <> ..... <> nōs
Instr/Loc: h₁moí <> ..... <> nsmí
Abl: h₁méd <> ..... <> nsméd


2nd person pronouns

Nom/Voc: túh₂ <> yuh₁ <> yūs
Acc stressed: twé <> uh₃wé <> uswé
Acc enclitic: te <> woh₃ <> wōs
Gen stressed: téwe <> ..... <> usóm
Gen enclitic: toy <> ..... <> wōs
Dat stressed: tébʰyo <> ..... <> usméy
Dat enclitic: toy <> ..... <> wōs
Instr/Loc: toí <> ..... <> usmí
Abl: twéd <> ..... <> usméd


In the next lesson, we'll see the demonstratives (including the one used as a third person pronoun).
Երկնէր երկին, երկնէր երկիր, երկնէր և ծովն ծիրանի.
Ambrisio
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Ambrisio »

So what exactly do those cases signify? If you wanted to say "I believe in you", for example, would you use the accusative, ablative or locative case for "in you"? (Latin uses the accusative with a preposition, just like English -- I'm not sure about Ancient Greek).
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atman
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

Ambrisio wrote:So what exactly do those cases signify? If you wanted to say "I believe in you", for example, would you use the accusative, ablative or locative case for "in you"? (Latin uses the accusative with a preposition, just like English -- I'm not sure about Ancient Greek).
The exact case syntax of PIE? Sorry, but I'm not a native speaker [:)]. I already made such a thing clear in the first post [;)]. Native speakers of PIE can't use a computer, after all [;)] . In general, the word exact and Indo-European studies don't go together well.

Having said that, I can try and make an educated guess.

The root of the verb “to believe” in PIE is “ḱred-dʰeh₁-” (etymological meaning: “to place one's heart”).

For hints about case syntax we turn to cognates in daughter languages:

- Latin “crēdō” can be used with the dative or with "in" and the accusative, but mostly with the dative in older Latin.

- Sanskrit “śraddadhāti” can be used with the dative, with the genitive or with the locative (the locative only when one believes in a thing, not a person), but mostly with the dative in older Sanskrit.

So, if older Latin and older Sanskrit agree on dative use, I agree as well and daringly translate "I believe in you" as:

tébʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁mi.

Or something like that.

h₁méǵʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁si?
Do you believe me/Did I convince you?


DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS

Note: the following pronouns are very difficult to reconstruct, and there isn't enough information about dual forms, so I mostly omitted them.

The two demonstratives usually reconstructed are éy and . The first one meant “this, the just named, the just mentioned”, the second one was probably used for more distant objects, more or less like English “that”. Of course, the exact semantics of such words are obscured by the millennia.


3rd person singular “he, she, it” / “this”

Case: Mascul. <> Femin. <> Neuter
Nom/Voc: éy <> íh₂ <> íd
Accusat.: ím <> íh₂m̥ <> íd
Genitive: h₁ésyo <> h₁eseh₂s <> h₁ésyo
Dative: h₁ésmōy <> h₁ésyeh₂ey <> h₁ésmōy
Instrum.: íh₁ <> íh₁ <> íh₁
Locative: h₁ésmi <> h₁ésyeh₂i <> h₁ésmi
Ablative: h₁ésmōd <> h₁éseh₂s <> h₁ésmōd


3rd person plural “they” / “these”

Case: Mascul. <> Femin. <> Neuter
Nom/Voc: éyes <> íh₂es <> íh₂
Accusative: íns <> íh₂n̥s <> íh₂
Genitive: h₁éysōm <> íh₂sōm <> h₁éysōm
Dative: h₁éymos <> íh₂mos <> h₁éymos
Instrum.: h₁eybʰi <> íh₂bʰi <> h₁eybʰi
Locative: h₁eysu <> íh₂su <> h₁eysu
Ablative: h₁éymos <> íh₂mos <> h₁éymos

Singular demonstrative “that”

Case: Mascul. <> Femin. <> Neuter
Nom/Voc: só <> séh₂ <> tód
Accusat.: tóm <> téh₂m <> tód
Genitive: tósyo <> tósyeh₂s <> tósyo
Dative: tósmey <> tósyeh₂ey <> tósmey
Instrum.: tónoh₁ <> téh₂eh₁ <> tónoh₁
Locative: tósmi <> tósyeh₂ <> tósmi
Ablative: tósmead <> tósyeh₂s <> tósmead


Dual demonstrative “those two”

Case: Mascul. <> Fem. <> Neuter
Nom/Voc tóh₁ <> ….. <> tóy
Accusat. tóh₁ <> ….. <> tóy


Plural demonstrative “those”

Case: Mascul. <> Femin. <> Neuter
Nom/Voc: tóy <> téh₂es <> téh₂
Accusat.: tóns <> téh₂ns <> téh₂
Genitive: tóysōm <> téh₂sōm<> tóysōm
Dative: tóymos <> téh₂mos <> tóymos
Instrum.: tṓys <> téh₂bʰi <> tṓys
Locative: tóysu <> téh₂su <> tóysu
Ablative: tóymos <> téh₂mos <> tóymos
Երկնէր երկին, երկնէր երկիր, երկնէր և ծովն ծիրանի.
Ambrisio
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by Ambrisio »

tébʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁mi.

h₁méǵʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁si?
Is that really how easy it is? It looks like the 1st person and 2nd person present forms are just the roots with -mi and -si suffixed. Is that true of all verbs?

If so, then they could have arisen from clitic forms of the personal pronouns (as in *ḱreddʰéh₁ si). And I have many reasons to believe that the clitic form of 'I' was really *h₁mi rather than *mi. For one thing, it's consistent with the other clitic forms of 'I' (e.g. accusative 'h₁me', etc.)

I'd really like some vocab so I can start forming sentences in PIE.
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atman
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Re: Spoken Yamna Style: Atman's guide to Proto-Indo-European

Post by atman »

Ambrisio wrote:
tébʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁mi.

h₁méǵʰyo ḱreddʰéh₁si?
Is that really how easy it is? It looks like the 1st person and 2nd person present forms are just the roots with -mi and -si suffixed. Is that true of all verbs?

If so, then they could have arisen from clitic forms of the personal pronouns (as in *ḱreddʰéh₁ si). And I have many reasons to believe that the clitic form of 'I' was really *h₁mi rather than *mi. For one thing, it's consistent with the other clitic forms of 'I' (e.g. accusative 'h₁me', etc.)

I'd really like some vocab so I can start forming sentences in PIE.
The PIE verbal system is staggeringly [:'(] complex. As if that weren't enough, it's full of quirks and unknowns (mysterious root affixes that were already unproductive by this stage of PIE but were still around, multiple aspect-switching strategies, a couple dozen conjugation classes for the present tense and more).

The problem is that we usually don't know which conjugation class a given verbal root belongs to. For the example above, I just used the simplest conjugation around, but there is far, far more to PIE verbs. And yes, these endings were probably derived from even older clitic pronouns.

For some vocabulary, belonging only to the declension classes I've shown already, see below [:)] .


SAMPLE VOCABULARY - NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES (we haven't really seen verbs yet)


dʰeǵhóm = earth, ground
dl̥h₁gʰós = long
éḱwos = horse
ǵʰóstos = hand
gʰromos = thunder
ǵr̥h₂nom = corn
gʷʰérmos = warm
gʷíh₃wos = alive
gʷíh₃woteh₂ = life
h₁elbʰós = white
h₁endrós = scrotum
h₁ómsos = shoulder
h₁rudʰrós = red
h₂éǵros = field
h₂élyos = other, another
h₂r̥tkos =bear
h₂wéh₁n̥tos = wind
kʷékʷlos = wheel
kʷr̥snós = black
lewkós = bright, luminous, clear
médʰyos = middle
nébʰos = cloud, sky
néwos = new
nisdós = nest
poksós = side, flank
psténos = woman's breast, nipple
spornóm = feather
tewtéh₂ = tribe
wl̥kʷos = wolf
yugóm = yoke
Երկնէր երկին, երկնէր երկիր, երկնէր և ծովն ծիրանի.
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